“It will be.” He reaches up and touches my face again. “I need to see her this one time. I need to know what’s so urgent. But after this . . .” He trails off, shaking his head. “After this, I can’t go back there.”
Arabo and I follow Drusus into the city. He takes us past the market, closer to the amphitheatre and its surrounding row upon row of taverns and brothels, finally stopping in front of a rundown building that looks like it’s held up by little more than the half-hearted goodwill of the gods.
“This is the place,” he says.
I look up at the building, raising an eyebrow. “It is?”
“We’ve met here before.” He gestures for me to follow him. “About as discreet as you can get in this city.”
It’s certainly discreet. The only way I imagine anyone would ever be found here is when the ramshackle place finally collapses and the Vigiles pull out the crushed bodies. The narrow hall inside winds like a labyrinth with no apparent reason to its direction, and sometimes a crooked support beam stands right in the middle of the cramped walkway. Drusus slips past with ease, but Arabo and I have a little more difficulty. An even narrower staircase leads us up to the second floor, the steps creaking and groaning beneath our feet.
All around and above us, the wood is old, dry, and splintering. The stonework was shoddy to begin with, and crumbling from time and weather.
At the top of the stairs, Drusus pushes open a half-broken door. “Arabo, you stand post outside this door. Saevius, you’ll be in here with me.” He looks at us. “No one comes in this room except for Verina. Am I clear?”
“Yes, Dominus,” we say in unison.
With the bodyguard outside the closed door, Drusus paces back and forth across the creaking floor. Neither of us speak. The building shifts and groans, as if every breath threatens to bring it crumbling down.
Voices and footsteps outside turn our heads. We both freeze when the door opens.
“In here.” Arabo waves Verina in.
She enters, and as Arabo closes the door behind her, Verina throws me a wary look, but then turns to Drusus.
“I came as soon as I could,” she says. “Your message said it was urgent, and—”
“My message?” Drusus glances at me, eyes wide. To her, he says, “I received one from you.”
“I don’t understand.” Verina shakes her head. “I sent nothing.”
All three of us exchange glances.
More voices outside. Urgent ones. Footsteps.
Slowly, as one, we turn toward the rickety door.
And that’s when the chaos erupts.
Outside the room, men shout and scuffle.
“We need to get out of here.” Drusus steps back from the door.
I look around the tiny room. “Except there’s only one way out.”
“Maybe not.” Verina brushes past us to the window. “There’s a cart below. We can—”
The door crashes open. Arabo stumbles backward, dragging Lucius with him. Drusus tackles Lucius from the side, and both men go down. “Lucius, you son of a whore!” Drusus snarls as he punches him in the jaw.
A pair of men I’ve never seen before storm in through the open doorway. One goes for Verina, but I head him off and take him down. His weapon falls to the floor. Verina snatches it up while I subdue the man.
The other invader comes after me, and I block the club in his hand, but he collides with me and shoves me away from my unconscious adversary. My wounded back hits the wall, and searing pain blurs my vision just long enough for my attacker to land a fist in my gut. I grunt, curse, and then send my elbow into the side of his head before grabbing his hair and slamming his face into my leg. His knees buckle, and I drive him all the way to the floor. As soon as he’s pinned, I snap his neck like I did Iovita’s.
I grab his club and scramble to my feet.
Verina’s pressed up against the wall, and Arabo’s got his back to her and the dagger in his hand. He’s poised like a predator, ready to lunge at Lucius the moment he gets the opportunity.
Drusus and Lucius struggle violently for control of Lucius’s weapon, and with the blade between them, they grapple and crash into a wall. The impact jolts the entire room, everything around us wobbling from the force of the blow. Drusus slams into Lucius again, and something splinters.
“Watch that wall, Drusus,” I shout. “It’s gonna give!”
He drags Lucius away from it. Lucius throws a punch.
The first attacker, the one I’d taken down when he went after Verina, isn’t as immobile or unconscious as I thought. He takes advantage of the distraction, and in a heartbeat, he’s dropped Arabo to the floor and swept a kick around to the backs of my knees, knocking them out from under me. I fall, just barely regaining awareness in time to fend off a dagger. I block his arm. The dagger hits the floor and spins across it. I clasp my fists together and sweep my arms to the side, buckling his knees and bringing him down.
He recovers quickly, though, and pulls me off balance. My back scrapes against the wall, and the pain blinds me once again, giving him the chance to pull me all the way to the floor. The dagger flashes, but Arabo attacks him and knocks him off me.
A roar draws my attention, and I look up just in time to see Lucius ram his shoulder into Drusus’s midsection, sending both men flying into the wall beside the window.
Into the wall, and through it.
Boards and supports snap. Both men scramble for something to hold on to, but the broken boards they grab break off in their hands. Drusus clambers for purchase. Lucius snatches a more solid board. They’re both dangling now, but not falling.
Arabo and I both lunge for Drusus. At that moment, Lucius throws an elbow into Drusus’s face. Drusus loses his grasp on the ledge, but he grabs Lucius’s tunic, and both men drop out of my sight.
The crash is sickening. The street below erupts in screaming and shouting.
“Drusus!” Verina hurries to the gaping hole in the wall.
The remaining attacker is on his feet, and when he starts toward Verina, I shout her name, but he’s faster than either of us, and grabs her. Light glints off metal just before he plunges a long blade deep into her side.
She gasps, her eyes widening. He jerks the weapon free, then shoves her, and before I can release my breath, she’s gone, plummeting out the same way Drusus and Lucius did.
Below, more screaming.More chaos.
I grab the attacker, and pure blind fury drives my fist into his face again and again, even after he stops fighting, and it’s only when Arabo murmurs a soft, “Oh gods . . .” that I stop and look up.
He’s looking over the ledge, his face slack.
I snap the attacker’s neck and let the limp body drop to the floor.
As I get back to my feet, Arabo says, “Let’s get down there. Quickly.”
With Drusus’s bodyguard on my heels, I hurry out of the room, down the rickety stairs and narrow hallway, and out into the street.
People are crowded around the base of the building. We shoulder our way through.
A few bystanders huddle around Verina and the smashed cart. She’s bleeding badly, a leg twisted at an unnatural angle, and her movements are sluggish and weak.
Drusus and Lucius, however, are gone.
“Where are they?” Arabo looks around. “They couldn’t have—”
“The others,” someone says, pointing frantically down a side street. “They went that way!”
Arabo and I both run in the direction we’re pointed. The crowd is thinner here, as the road leads farther away from the marketplace and into the less savory parts of the city, but still we don’t see any sign of Lucius or Drusus.
The road splits. Arabo goes left, I go right. It’s narrower here, with shadows and crevices in all directions where the men could be fighting, nursing their wounds, waiting to ambush us, dead.
Gods, show me Drusus. Please, please, take me to him . . .
They fell from a second floor. If they’re able to outrun us and get this far from the cart that broke their fall, they can’t be seriously wounded. Not yet, anyway. I don’t imagine they’re running away from each other.